#DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB EROGE MOD SERIES#

Isaku, the first game in the series, is actually quite different structurally to the sequels that would come later.

#DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB EROGE MOD SERIES#

There’s some context that should probably be set-up before going into Shuusaku itself – first off, Shuusaku is actually a part of a series of games (Isaku / Shuusaku / Kisaku) that happens to be popular in its home country but is almost completely unknown overseas, in part due to its unavailability in English, but also because games with dark themes generally did not find themselves with communities for discussion (the holy grail of that era amongst importer communities were Key’s nakiges like Kanon.) On the other hand, if you’re an old fogey who hasn’t been in the scene much, then you’re more likely to recognize them from the OVA adaptation of their Fantasy RPG Words Worth, if only because of the memes. If you’re a VN enthusiast, your familiarity with the company is likely to come from YU-NO, a game considered to be the company’s Magnum Opus which has recently received a “modern” remake that shall not be spoken of in polite company. If not, read on.Īs the running theme of quite a few games I cover, Shuusaku’s creator Elf is one of those influential companies in the medium and their unfortunate descent into bankruptcy would make for an interesting tale of its own. With the knowledge that Shuusaku is not simply your average dark nukige, you may choose to leave now if you wish to seek out and experience this game for yourself. Consider the folly of Wonderful Everyday’s marketing, which hides its genre shifts in an attempt to recreate the original Japan release conditions, only to be met with financial failure. The chances of an audience who would appreciate the genre shift would be almost nil in such conditions and thus the wiser decision of simply giving away the twist was done. However, such stories do not have much appeal even among the medium’s enthusiasts in English regions due to its perceived genericness. This was not the case in its original Japanese release, where the existence of Unlimited (the Sci-Fi portion of the game), was hidden from its audience and considered a mindblowing twist when they simply expected a fluffy high school romance, which was very popular among the target audience.

This goes doubly so for games whose short descriptions would not appeal to the average public – it should be fairly self evident from reading the description of this one that the premise would be considered distasteful to the average joe, but as another comparison, let us take Muv Luv, a series whose genre shift into Sci-Fi Mecha is now considered common knowledge and outright advertised in the Steam storefront page. Ironically, because of the publicity raised, Nitroplus’s game has now been slated for an English localization, so you can go buy the game and form your own opinions on that subjectīut what if I were to tell you that there is an earlier source that dealt with similar “meta” elements that both of these games rely on?

Now the actual “controversy” in question involves the popular Internet sensation “Doki Doki Literature Club” and Nitroplus’s “Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi”, with many accusations of the former being a ripoff of the latter due to many similarities in the concept and set-up. Sometimes the path of development appears obvious – I mean, how could anyone not realize that Atlus’s Persona 3 is just a mainstream remake of Alicesoft’s influential masterpiece Yoru Ga Kur… wait sorry, wrong script. This tends to lead to a future “popularizer” media being seen as the definitive and outside of its original country, it tends to be experienced with a loss of context that the original audience would have picked up on. In the field of foreign media there is a curveball thrown in the mix though – sometimes the original influential media might end up not being localized for multiple reasons, such as a perceived lack of financial viability. It’s a viewpoint that’s generally not shared in Japanese culture, where homages and even wholesale references tend to be enjoyed, such as Akira’s Shotaro Kaneda being an outright namedrop for the main character of Mecha genre originator Tetsujin 28.Īll fiction is inevitably built upon existing fiction, so variations on a theme will happen.

Doki doki literature club eroge mod